Super Natural Chef Kari Bernardi makes raw taste great

My doctor is trying to get me to eat things that are leafy and green, but she's not having an easy time of it.

I'm not sure where she's going wrong. Last time I saw her she showed me a whole page of numbers that a lab had squeezed out of my blood. She said many sentences and tilted her head. She squinted — I think to see if any of this was getting through to me.

I hate disappointing her. But that seems to be our relationship.

I don't want to tell Dr. Meyers how to run her business, but I think she should use my next couple of co-pays to buy a blender to keep in her office, maybe next to the sphygmomanometer. Then she can make me a green smoothie while I pretend to study my lab results.

Lucky for her, I recently met Carmel resident Kari Bernardi — also known as the Super Natural Chef — who gave me a recipe and my first sip of something green that wasn't a margarita. It includes three cups of spinach, a pile of fruit and a sprinkling of chia seeds, all of which I hope will get my bad numbers down and my good numbers up. And it's delicious. I've been gulping them down several mornings a week ever since.

Bernardi has been a vegetarian and raw food chef for more than 20 years. Besides cooking for private clients, Bernardi teaches people how to make raw and vegetarian meals at interactive cooking workshops at Stone Creek Kitchen in Monterey and at the Marina Farmers Market.

Raw food is truly a passion for Bernardi, a founding director of CSU Monterey Bay's Farm to School Partnership and a former faculty member at the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute.

Now 42, Bernardi became vegetarian when she was 15. She practiced vegetarianism haphazardly in high school (a lot of iceberg lettuce, not a lot of nutrients), but discovered the raw-food diet in 1994, when the movement was still new and considered kind of weird. As an athlete, she could feel the charge her new diet was delivering.

"I found my body excelled on green juices and wheat grass," she said.

In 1998 Bernardi met Cherie Soria, "the mother of gourmet raw foods," in the first class held at Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, a school founded by Soria that now teaches raw food practices to students from 50 countries. Bernardi became Soria's first apprentice, and for the next 10 years followed her to to Jamaica, Costa Rica, Hawaii and Mexico (as well as to California, Oregon and Washington) to teach people the importance of a raw food diet.

"It's an inner calling to support the world around me," said Bernardi. "That is the belief of raw fooders. I know some people think we're extreme, but we want everyone to feel wonderful, to feel their best. We know by eating lots of greens, not eating too many cooked foods and staying away from toxins that we can all feel wonderful."

Raw food advocates believe food is healthiest when uncooked, although heating food is considered acceptable as long as the temperature stays below 118 degrees, when they say enzymes in the food are impaired.

"Also a lot of us believe in the vital life force of foods, so we don't want to cook out the life force," Bernardi said.

A plant-based diet goes beyond health benefits for Bernardi, who has embraced raw as a way of life.

"The (goal) of a plant-based diet is that we are all fed, that everyone has a place at the table," Bernardi said. "There's enough plants for everyone on the entire planet. You can't say that about all diets."

After teaching workshops for so long, she knows transitioning from the typical American diet to one consisting of raw foods can seem daunting, but finds that once people apply themselves it gets easier. She advises people transitioning to be easy on themselves, to stick to some cooked foods early on, such lentil soup and quinoa, and to keep a positive attitude about the changeover.

"Don't say 'no' to yourself. Say 'yes' to something healthy first," she said. "So if you're trying to kick coffee, say yes to green tea or yes to herbal tea. And if you're still thirsty have the coffee — pretty soon you won't want it."

Stranger things have happened. For instance, today a healthy diet is considered a lot less weird, and has gone way beyond tofu. You can find chia seeds on Safeway shelves and kale chips and coconut water at Trader Joe's. So is it really too much to ask for my doctor to greet me with a green smoothie? That might just get my attention.

Steps: Put H2O, grapes, banana and orange in blender and blend into juice. Add other ingredients and blend until creamy.

Blondie Parfaits with Cashew Vanilla Bean Cream and Fresh Berries

(Makes 4-6 servings)

— By Super Natural Chef Kari Bernardi

"Make no mistake — this is filled with calories," said Kari Bernardi, the Super Natural Chef. "We are using dates as a sweetener. A lot of people think any raw food is supremely healthy, so I want you to know that this is dessert."

For the Blondie Nut Crumble:

1 cup raw pecans

1 cup raw cashews

1 cup raw almonds

1 cup pitted and crowned Medjool dates, packed

2 tsp. ground vanilla beans

pinch of Himalayan Salt (available at Stone Creek Kitchen)

Steps: Put nut assortment in food processor with S-blade and grind into a coarse meal.

Loosely separate dates and add them to food processor with vanilla bean and salt. Continue processing mixture until well combined but crumbly.

For the Cashew Vanilla Bean Cream:

2 cups raw cashews, soaked 4 hours

1 cup pure water (or more if necessary to blend creamy)

½ cup pitted Medjool dates, packed

2 tsp. ground vanilla beans

pinch of Himalayan salt

Steps: Place water and cashews in blender and blend until smooth. Add the dates, vanilla bean and salt and continue to blend until creamy.

For the Fresh Berry Topping:

2 cups of mixed berries (blueberry, strawberry, blackberry)

1-2 T. of light agave nectar (only use if berries are tart)

Meyers Lemon Peel, finely micro-planed

Pinch of Himalayan salt.

Steps: To assemble parfait: Put nut crumble in bottom of individual glasses and layer with cashew vanilla bean cream and top with fresh berries, shreds of lemon rind, a swirl of agave nectar and a sprinkling of salt. Chill in fridge or serve immediately.